From the middle of the 19^th century, i.e. from the conquest of Central Asia by the Tsarist Russia this mainly Islamic region turned into a multinational and multi-religious territory. Colonial Turkestan became the area of spreading Russian imperial political and economic interests. At the same time, this cosmopolitan region was a crossroad, where East and West met and various cultures influenced one another. Both trends were inherited by the Soviet Central Asian Republics.

Poles were one of the ethnic groups that sought to preserve its national identity  (although not with complete success) during their roughly one-and- a- half-century long life in Central Asia and in spite of the Tsarist and Soviet state policy of forced assimilation.

  The history of the Polish communities and the fates of the individual Poles who found themselves for a variety of reasons in Central Asia from the middle of the 19^th century to the present day is a fascinating and vast topic. It includes a whole spectrum of roles and circumstances: political exiles; officers and soldiers of the Tsarist Army; officials of the Tsarist Administration; businessmen; prisoners of war and refugees of World War I; deportees and refugees of World War II etc.

 This particular lecture concerns itself with the relations between the Poles and the Tsarist authorities in Turkestan and, after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, with the Soviet authorities in the Socialist republics of Central Asia (especially, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan).

 One telling example of the “bilateral” relations of the Poles and the authorities is the history of the creation and the subsequent liquidation of the Roman Catholic parishes in Tashkent, Samarkand and other cities in Central Asia.

 The lecture will then describe the “care” extended to the Poles by the Secret Political Police Department of the Russian Empire in Turkestan (the so called okhranka); the plight of the prisoners of war of World War I; the repatriation of  the Poles in the early 20’s; the state policy towards national minorities in the  20’s and 30’s; Stalin’s repression of Poles as “enemies of the state” in the 30-40’s; the relocation of the Poles from Siberia and the Russian North to “the area with milder climate” in 1941; the formation of Anders’ Army in 1942; the activities of Zwiazek Polskich Patriotow (The Union of the Polish Patriots) in the Central Asian Republics of the USSR; and, finally, the repatriation of Polish citizens after World War II.

 The study is based on documentation from the state and private archives.